Solartwin delivers almost 1000 kWk per year – technology and installation details.

I thought readers might like to know that a Solartwin user’s solar water heating panel generated 1002 Kwh of heat in 1 year 10 days. Here is the background.

The results are from independent monitoring.

The Solartwin solar thermal installation is:

• Located in the North West of UK. The north of UK is about 20% less sunny than the South.
• Has its solar collector oriented to be South West facing. This factor reduces yield by around 5-10%.
• Has a solar collector which is subject to about 5% shading. This factor reduces yield, once again.
• Is plumbed directly into a thermal store as a pre-feed to a combi boiler. This kind of plumbing maximises performance, due to well stratified hot water storage with being backup heating located downstream, while also managing Legionella risk robustly.
• Is used by a large family with high hot water use. Again this maximises performance by reducing hot water temperatures and maximising pump-on time.
• Uses no mains electricity for its pump. Typical traditional solar panels will use about 75 kilowatt-hours of electricity a year. This negates it energy performance by about 7.5% and its carbon saving performance by about 20%.

I hope this is interesting!

Sunny regards from Barry.